The FTP connection I have between the two is a bit pear-shaped. I drag folders from the gutsy desktop box to my laptops /home/larry directory and the alert comes up 'Error reading the folder 'blah de blah' the file is not a directory' - except it is a directory! Files copy across the divide between desktop box and laptop. But directories will not. Considering I wish to transfer the bulk of my /home desktop box directory to the /home directoy of my laptop, this isn't very good news.

Any advice will be really appreciated, thanks!

The FTP was set up automatically (detected, perhaps) by the hardy installer.